Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Do animals understand death? Do humans?

While reading the papers this morning my eye was caught by the striking images of Gana, an 11-year old gorilla living at Munster zoo, Germany, holding her dead baby aloft.

According to all the news stories I've read, this photo demonstrates that she is grieving - feeling the same emotions as we would in these circumstances. Really? Or is this just rampant anthropomorphism?

But others have argued that foisting human emotions onto animals is unscientific. Just because animals sometimes behave like us does not mean that the same complex cognitive reasoning underlies these behaviours.

Now, call me heartless, but the first thing that jumped into my head when I saw the picture of Gana with her dead infant was that, rather than mourning, she looked thoroughly flummoxed.

It seems to me that the question here is not do animals experience grief, so much as do they understand death? And, while I'm on that subject, do humans even understand death?

Science tells us that death is pretty much the end of the story in terms of human experience. But there are plenty of examples of human behaviour that seem to fly in the face of this.

One example is famadihana - the turning of the bones - a traditional ritual carried out by the Malagasy people of Madagascar. Every seven years, the dead relatives are exhumed from the family tomb, re-wrapped, and danced around the tomb.

This ancient tradition is a form on ancestral worship; a way of showing respect for the dead. But it is also an opportunity to reunite the dead and the living, based on the belief that the dead will benefit from this experience.

Perhaps the origins of practices like these stem from an inherent inability to understand death that we share with other primates, which might explain why Gana looked so flummoxed. Most people know that their dead relatives are not going to come back to life, but whether this understanding is innate, or whether we are taught to believe this, I'm not sure.

But, I have to ask if we commonly consider 'confusion' to be assigned exclusively to the human domain? Anthropomorphism is assigning exclusively human traits to animals. Obviously, there are many traits we acknowledge sharing that are not suspected of falling under the error: anthropomorphism. Personally, observing the two dog's I've had, I was surprised to see such a full range of responses. As others have pointed out, the simple ability to play (pretend for a period that a tennis ball is something important and then leave it like any object on the floor) is proof of self-awareness. You need a self in order to pretend (apparently, they say).

There should be little doubt that our emotional brains process the observance of death in an immediate or extended family in the same way as do the animals from which (or from whom) we inherited that already complex calculative apparatus.And even with our newer rational brain areas, we remain perplexed and unaccepting of the finality of the process.

"...call me heartless, but the first thing that jumped into my head when I saw the picture of Gana with her dead infant was that, rather than mourning, she looked thoroughly flummoxed."

poo, allen and roy are absolutely right: Isn't that expressing just another anthropomorphic response? How can you tell what a gorilla's way of "mourning" or feeling "thoroughly flummoxed" is?

Ah, of course. I see. You just decide that's what it looks like to you, then declare it a scientifically non-anthropmorphic observation because your own personal judgement somehow carries more weight.

Every time I see humans "grieving" they look "thoroughly flummoxed". But isn't being flummoxed a part of grief? We can't help but anthropomorphize. We can't look at ANYTHING without trying to "understand" it in terms we can personally relate to. What's a body to do but interpret what we see in others by empathizing with them...anthropomorphically?

This anthro-obsession is completely off the mark. Humans do NOT have a monopoly on emotional response. We're not special except for the extra conceit that our big, clever and endlessly-inventive brains furnish.

Brain-size isn't the issue. It's just about whether an organism can feel empathy, period. When one of our dogs died, the family grieved, and our surviving dogs grieved with us. They knew what happened. Animals aren't stupid. And they do not need us to validate what they feel and how they feel it.

As for humans "understanding death", it's spectacularly obvious that since the vast majority of people superstitiously believe in some sort of 'afterlife', the vast majority of humans don't understand death. Many of the remaining minority will simply admit it's just not possible to understand a state of mind where no understanding can take place: one cannot mind anything without a mind. Do we have an understanding? I think not. We don't even understand what understanding is. Nobody does. We just like to think we do, as a matter of convenient conceptual model-making, in order to retain some measure of sanity. But saying so never actually makes it so. It's just saying so.

You write, "Most people know that their dead relatives are not going to come back to life" but this is not true. Most people actually believe in some sort of bizarre fairy tale about life after death. Obviously the Christian or Buddhist ideas about death are no less ridiculous than those of the traditional Malagasy.

It is surprising that so few people understand death - after all, it's an extremely simple concept! And the fact that most people don't expect their wrecked car to arise from the junkyard suggests that they do have sufficient brainpower to understand it.

Animals may not have a better understanding of death than most humans, but they certainly have fewer misconceptions about it.

I see what you you are getting at, and would be interested to know which emotional traits have been identified in animals that are also shared by humans. I suspect that the numbers would be far lower than would be anticipated but imagine this to be more a result of the testing methods than anything else. As to whether confusion is a predominantly human trait, I think that a suitable definition of confusion would be "a lack of understanding", so unless we first imbue animals with "understanding", their natural state is confusion so appearing confused or flumoxed would be unlikely. Its all semantics anyhow as our language has evolved to describe human qualities perfectly but when it comes to the animal kingdom we're not really past the "beef" and "sausage" stages.

Do animals understand death?Personal experience with both wild and domestic animals persuades me that they understand that there is an alternative to life (or the normal), perhaps some kind of end (or escape). I say that because I have seen sick or wounded animals clearly pass a point where they "give up". That resignation is clearly visible. Whether it is a conscious choice is debatable, but on the occasions when I have observed it, there was a clear transition in the animal's behavior.Do animals grieve?Domestic dogs and cats noticeably miss a member of their group when they are separated. Both will search for the absent animal, dogs may whine, and cats call out. A single case in my experience with cats does suggest something like grief. One of our Burmese cats, Ted, was very old and clearly approaching his end. During that time, the alpha male cat (a big Siamese tabby cross named Cougar) used to keep Ted company and groom him (not Cougar's normal behavior). Cougar was present when the old Burmese finally died. For some days afterwards, Cougar would repeatedly visit the now vacant spot where Ted had spent his last days. Finally, Cougar let out a long, terrible, wail at that location in the house, while I happened to be present. From then on, his behavior returned to normal. That moment suggests to me that Cougar had reached some kind of realization. Was it conscious understanding of death? I don't know. But that wail sounded more like grief than any other sound I have ever heard.Do I understand death?I am a convinced atheist. For me, death is my end, followed by nothing. Judge for yourself.

"But others have argued that foisting human emotions onto animals is unscientific. Just because animals sometimes behave like us does not mean that the same complex cognitive reasoning underlies these behaviours."

Calling human emotions 'complex cognitive reasoning' would be more than pushing it. Human emotions are simple and have nothing to do with reasoning but rather are a quick reaction mechanism based on the direct symptoms of a situation, not so much the underlying complexity of it.

Koko the gorilla, who can use sign language, lost her best friend, another gorilla named Michael. Here's the link to how she expressed her grief:

http://www.koko.org/world/mourning.html

Perhaps one of the most chilling accounts of the internal life of other species came when I read the account of how Michael, who was normally much more reserved and quiet than Koko, almost chronically sad, woke up very upset one morning and explained that he had been dreaming about when the hunters had murdered his mother and taken him captive. I don't think anyone could read this and not be convinced that he understood death and that he had been traumatized by his mother's murder.

Actually the scientific answer would be that controlled experiments have shown it's highly probable that our emotions not only evolved from our primate ancestors but have remained remarkably similar when the situations involved, such as death in a family, are comparable.

I'm surprised by the aggression in a lot of these replies and the fact that so many of them seem to have ironically ignored the imteresting point of the article, which is that our own scientific rationality may well merely be a learned response. Of course, picking a random tribe to highlight the strangeness of death rituals immediately seems to express that all-too-familiar "learned" arrogance to other cultures (and species), whether that was intended or not.

In fact, whilst we're on the subject, many of us will have noticed that it is more often the "learned" scientists who deny the presence of animal sentience with all "anecdotal" reports being ignored, whilst those with little formal academic training know instinctively that animals grieve, feel joy, and understand death and pain and punishment well beyond the Skinner / Pavlov confines we place upon them. So, then, it may be that our detached rationality anti anti-anthropomorphic stance is the conditioned response in us human animals, whereas empathy with the emotions of other species is a more natural state for us.

Unfortunately the underlying sentiment in this article expresses the 'scientific' arrogance that prevented Victorian 'scientists' admitting the rampant level of communication that is part of the lives of animals other than humans.

It would be nice if researchers could stick to the evidence before them but not take a lack of research or evidence as evidence that something is not possible.

There is no doubt in my mind that some birds at least grieve and carry the memory of a lost one for some time. We would regularly see and sometimes feed a pair of cows (which are actually ravens, but called crows in Australia). On morning we sadly found one of the birds dead on our front lawn, and subsequently disposed of the body in the rubbish. For the next week the other bird spent most of the day hopping about the lawn, particularly frequenting the spot its partner last occupied, while making a soft (and to our ear sad) call. About three days after the event we found our lawn occupied by at least eight other crows, who were mostly silent and stayed for over an hour. There has never been such a display before or since, and what else could it be but 'friends' of the dead bird holding a 'wake' in remembrance? Now, a year later, the single bird still returns and is sometimes fed, but on occasion will ignore food and other distractions, go to the area the dead bird was found and call softly to its lost mate. I think it would take a heartless fiend to explain that behavior as anything other than grief and mourning.

In his recent book The Emotional Lives of Animals, Professor Marc Bekoff wrote: “my suspicion is that ‘doubt’ about animal emotions is espoused not because it serves science but because it protects the emotional needs of the scientist.”

It seems that humans are often unwilling to accept the emotional lives of other animals because we would then have difficulty accepting how we use animals, from eating them to confining them in zoos.

For an angle on this gorilla story that hasnt been covered in the newspapers see http://www.captiveanimals.org/news/2008/gorilla.html

What makes us so sure that WE understand death ? Most people live their lives in utter fear of the one thing that is certain - i.e. death. And ... we certainly have no idea what it means (besides no taxes, and no mortgage). So it seems rater idiotic that we think we have exclusive rights to knowing death! Asinine!

"Flummoxed" may be more to the point than some commentators want to concede. The gorilla Gana had another baby, her first one, in 2007, a daughter called Mary Zwo. She rejected the baby, and veterinarians had to save the gorilla girl from dehydration. She now lives in another German zoo, in another gorilla group.When Gana showed a tendency to neglect her second child, Claudio, then 3 months old, the zoo decided that it would not be appropriate to take away another one of her children and raise it by hand. They were hoping that Gana, as during the previous 3 months, would stabilise and accommodate herself in her role as a mother. Previously Claudio had already played with a 9-months old gorilla child in his group, but was not weaned yet, so he was still dependent on Gana and her willingness to breastfeed him. When he got weaker from neglect 2 weeks ago, the zoo staff put baby bottles with milk in the cage, in order to support him until his mother would take care of him again. He died on Saturday. The zoo made a conscious decision to not raise another of Gana children by hand. The pro's and con's for thisn decisions may result in another discussion thread, but not under the current headline.Mind, my comment is not meant to be an accusation against a "cruel and heartless" gorilla mother "who failed in her duty". But does the background of the story not reveal that the female gorilla had been in deep confusion about her own role and her relationship to her two children? The confusion Gana demonstrated is not a definitive proof against her ability to feel love for her son or feel grief for the loss. But confusion more aptly describes her behaviour than a heartthrob interpretation, promoted by the news agencies, about her understanding what death means and about the irrevocable loss of a loved one. If Gana did not realise that her son was suffering from neglect during the previous weeks and was lapsing into apathy, why, on the other hand, would she be able to understand the finality of death, a concept hard to grasp and accept for humans, too? In respect of Ockham's razor, let us not throw in another human emotion, "remorse", to explain Gana's behavior after she found that her son had changed from a living, playful member of the gorilla group to a limp ball of fur that no longer moved or breathed. She demonstrates that she is missing the child she had lived with for 3 months and she cannot cope yet with its transformation to a limp ball of fur - but the "understanding of death" itself is an interpretation that goes beyond what can be derived from these observations. How could Gana have acquired the concept of "death", beyond the physical observation that a living being one day may stop to move and interact with its environment? Did Gana ever see a dead animal, to say nothing of a dead gorilla, which she saw move and breathe the day before? Do gorillas have a language that can express abstract concepts such as "death", which is nothing you can point at or grasp with your hands? Could other members of her family group have conveyed this concept to Gana using sign language? The gorillas who did learn human sign language did not reveal their ideas about death to their human caretakers until now, for all I know.Or is Gana's understanding of death some innate ability? If Gana is not unique, then all Gorillas must bear, and pass on, this innate awareness of the finality of death, through their genes, or how else could apes (or dogs or other creatures to whom we tend to ascribe human emotions) pass on an understanding of death, for lack of a language? A death-awareness gene? Is this not too far-fetched? The confusion when observing a fellow ape (or dog) that stops to move and breathe, and an expression of grief because that inanimate body of the fellow no longer responds to social signals seems to offer a simpler explanation than a death-awareness gene or an exchange, via sign language, of ideas about death, between dogs, elephants or apes.

There are likely no death awareness genes, but there are coping mechanisms that are clearly inherited, and that seem to exist in all animals that have come to rely on social or group living systems. We don't yet understand how these "instincts" are passed on genetically, but the grieving process is clearly one of these mechanisms. And contrary to what at least one poster seems to believe, the emotional systems of primates and other sentient beings are extremely complex. There is for example self-awareness in animals, and that awareness is closely related to the confusion that we have observed when animals become aware of what we have come to label as "death." On one basic level, it tends to screw with the expectations that these living beings have to have about their own future prospects.

As one that has lost a baby and still remains so cold that I deem humans in no higher respect than termite; the loss of something you gave creation to can be appreciated by all living creatures. For any creature that nurtures, defends and looks after its offspring knows when it is not living. Flummoxedor not I call it devastated.

And by your way of going about your day to day life I am sure that your intellect and natural equilibrium with your surroundings makes you so much smarter than the ape.

I can't say for sure that other humans experience the same emotions as I do. They certainly behave as if they do, based on the rules of human behavior I have taught myself. Gorillas don't seem to make the same faces in the same situations, but aside from that they certainly behave as if saddened, angered, fearful...

I guess the difference is that I can stick a bunch of people in a CAT scanner to see what bits of their brains light up with different emotions. Conscious gorillas and CAT scanners don't mix.

It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant some scientists can be. When it comes to the soul because they can't see it or measure it they say it doesn't exist. But when it comes to dark matter they invent it because othewise their equations or measurments don't make sense. Scientists used to believe that the ether held the moon in place becasue they couldn't imagine what else would. But the eather was just a concept thought up to eplain something they couldn't otherwise grasp.When it comes to the soul or the afterlife or ghosts it seems to be a banished subject, reputable scientists just don't want to go there or their reputations will be forever tarnished.So given that there has been so little real scientific investigation of such matters why do a lot of scientists leap so wholeheartedly onto a a belief position of death is the end.Have they ever stopped to consider why the belief in the afterlife came into being in the first place. Personnally I think science should stop shunning this area of investifgation and start putting some serious work into it or are they all too afraid of what they might find.

What does having or not having a soul got to do with apes and the extent of their emotions? There are Christians who believe in evolution, most notably the Catholics. To them, the question of whether apes have a form of soul is not relevant to whether they have emotions, or to the nature thereof. It may be relevant to those who don't believe in evolution and that humans with souls are a completely separate species, appearing on earth out of holy whole cloth, so to speak. But even then, we're still not talking about animals in general (gorillas in particular), which was the subject of discussion here.

I'm amazed at the range of emotional responses to this article when scientist are meant to remain detached and unbiased to observe and record evidence. This is a scientific based journal, is it not?

Ok, coming down off the soap box I'll mention a few points - one, emotions are based in the reptillian part of our brains - i.e. the most central, primitive part. It makes much more sense that animals share our emotional responses than our rationale.

Second, neurons fire based upon bayesian logic - and bayesian logic serves to form abstractions and concepts within our brains. I have witnessed (anectdotally) a six month old puppy demonstrate the capability of understanding abstractions. That's something that the average human child cannot do until it's ~2 years of age. They form this capability much sooner, but stop developing it.

The really tragic part of all this is not that most humans do not understand death, but that most humans do not understand life and oft lose site of it's finiteness. Make the most of it.

Is it really that difficult to imagine that perhaps we return back to that nothingness from which we came before our births?

I would concur that our emotional brain, aka: lizard brain, operates with the equivalent of bayesian logic, but I question whether "bayesian logic serves to form abstractions and concepts within our brains." Bayesian logic is essentially the use of probability theory, rather than the more syllogistic reasoning used by our so-called rational brain.

The abstractions referenced are essentially pre-formed from the symbolism all life's calculating systems rely on to match sensory input. We also inherit operative strategies that trigger our emotional responses, which are little bundles of abstractions to begin with. These are formed from experience as organisms evolve, even though there's disagreement as to how such experience becomes codified and passed on.And then of course those that have passed things on, pass on as well.

Very nice article - well said.As I was reading all the various stories about this gorilla and her unfortunate offspring, it did seem that the media was going out of their way to imprint human emotion onto this animal.

From everything I'd seen, she simply looked like she couldn't figure out what was going on. So, unable to figure out why her baby was no longer bothering to do anything, she carried it around, waiting for it to do something.

There was one picture where it appears the light bulb *almost* goes on. She is holding another gorilla's baby, and she's looking at it, with her dead son on her back, and you just wonder if the "Hmmm ... wonder why mine isn't behaving like this?" was going through the brain.

She probably just carried him around until the smell got bad from the decomposition.

I also read an article that seemed to indicate that Gana was neglecting this baby, just as she neglected her daughter. I guess one thing they share with humans is that some of them don't make good parents.

I think, as a whole, some animals are very clever - a lot more clever than we sometimes give them credit for. I also believe they can be sad, if someone they love is no longer around or they sense that their master is sad (in the case of dogs). However, I just don't believe Gana was grieving like a human.

Mumans go through a complex grieving process. I'd be interested to know if such a thing exists in the gorillas, or is this over in Gana's mind now that she left her baby laying on the ground?

One problem is the idea that emotions are separate from reason, or that our 'reasoning' has some basis other than our emotions. A previous NS article related that the decisions we THINK we are making are actually made 10 seconds or so before we think our choices are decided, by emotions or hormones. Our hormones often are enhanced by the closeness and body activities of another person. If that person is not responding, we would feel a loss somewhere, whether we consciously realize it or not. Death is a marketing tool to get the rich to pay for hospitals and golf courses. Life after death is a marketing tool to get poor people to buy churches. It's all in the marketing.

Yes, animal have also emotion, though animal`s emotions are not so much develop just like man but when cow`s child dead I had seen tear in her eyes.When out beloved dead we also weep. Why we and animal weep? only because these death remand us that one day we also die.Our beloved death remind us our own death. One qurious point there are thousand death we read in newspaper seen in T.V.At that time we did not weep but our nearest beloved death that we weep

Ramesh, I disagree completely that we weep only because the deaths of those close to us remind us that one day we also die. I know I will die and, as an atheist, I believe that will be an absolute end for me. That doesn't make me weep. We weep because we are deprived of the person we love or who is a close friend. However, when we see the lifeless body, I don't know whether its is instinct or cognitive reasoning that tells us it represents deprivation. If it's instinct, then certainly the higher animals (at least including dogs and cats) will understand the same deprivation. And that is what I have observed in my observation of both wild and domestic animals, based on my (subjective) interpretation of their behavior.

I challenge any so-called scientist to maintain both that we evolved from apes AND have exclusive rights to emotion. The two statements are contradictory. Any Human being who maintains that animals do not 'feel' as we do (or feel areasonable facsimile thereof) is, in my opinion, arrogant and ignorant.

It is logical that at the very least social animals have to know what death is. If social animals didn't understand death, they would try to continue on as if the individual was alive. This could be detrimental to their own ability to survive or reproduce.

If a mother thinks her baby is still alive she will waste time and resources carrying around a corpse. If the alpha male (or female for bonobos) dies and no one recognises this fact, the group will just stay in the one place. If a member of your group dies, and you are expecting them to still "watch your back" you are more likely to be taken by a predator. …and so on.

As to the discussion over grief, surely it is clear now from a vast amount of research that human emotions are a "short cut" decision making tool (like interrupts in a computer, they override whatever you are thinking), with an extremely simple mechanism. Emotions are used to tag memories etc. too, so they must be as old as the evolution of memory. Our so called "higher functions" are laid down on top of the basic emotional responses, so it makes perfect sense to assume that other animals are experiencing them too.

I can see emotional reactions in my cats. They can sulk with me even the next day, they are clearly pleased with themselves when they bring home a bird for me, and one of them is a rescue cat whose emotional scars are quite horrific. If something happens to remind her of the neglect and bullying she suffered, you can quite clearly see her emotional distress.

Otterboy, I watched the vid you linked. There is no way that people can say that our fellow apes are not capable of suffering the way humans do!

The use of the term "anthropmorphism" in the dispariging sense by some people is actually unscientific. The judgement is based on the premise that humans are a seperate creation from animals. The more scientific premise is that humans are animals and that our emotions arose long ago, which implies that the emotions we feel are shared by many animals. In summary "anthropmorphism" is not unscientific at all!

I'd like to point out toward the second question since I believe the first is ill-posed. Maybe I'll just say that as long as we don't have a good communication link with any other specie, we can hardly know what that specie is capable to think or feel. And because I'm a dog owner and I've seen how much a dog is able to feel and express, I think it's little bit weird to claim a closer to humans biological specie will be less able to have emotions.

But back to the second question. Do humans understand death? No. And this is a definite answer. Even if you think you understand it, you still don't. It's enough to see death near you, to understand how uncomfortable you are with it. And what a hurricane of emotions it can arise in you.In short-the only thing we know about death is that it's a process, not a moment. But from then on, there's no science. Brain shuts down, heart stops, but body cells can live for hours after that. Another organisms may live for days or months on the dead body. The most fascinating part-the heart and the lungs may stop, the brain may start shutting off, but after getting the person back to life, s/he may be completely the same person as before or may slip into coma. There was a case in France when a person was claimed dead and completely recovered after hours without life-support. Sure, nobody monitored his(or was it her?) brain, but still, that raise a lot of questions.What do we know about death? Nothing!We know that the body slowly dissolves and the person is not available anymore in that form. Where s/he goes, what happens, will there be another similar person after 18 years (the time for the personality to complete its maturity)-can we know after that time and with all the 5 billion members of the human race? I doubt.We know nothing of death and our feelings toward it are thus more marked by egoism than anything else. We mourn the person because WE lost it. That has nothing to do with the death of that person. We'd feel the same way if s/he went to live in another galaxy. http://tothefuturewithlove.blogspot.com